Now that we’re deep into the summer, it’s time for another reading list! Here’s what I’ve been reading this summer.
How about you?
Housing is always a hot topic in Iowa City. And it’s one I write about from time to time. Most recently, I wrote a couple of posts about how both YIMBY and NIMBY positions get it wrong.
I’ll continue that theme in this post.
Obviously housing is one of our most basic needs. It stands alongside food and water as one of the essentials. But it’s also an issue that brings to bear many of the central problems with life in an advanced capitalist country full of inequalities of wealth and power. It also shows our political shortcomings.
Nowhere do we see all this more clearly than in two recent housing developments in Iowa City.
My partner works for a local non-profit that puts on a couple of well known and well attended festivals in Iowa City each summer. One of the festivals centers on art, while the other centers on music. The latter just finished up. Both festivals run for an entire weekend. The first one over the course of the first weekend of June, and the second over the first weekend of July.
More importantly for this post, this means I have two weekends to myself. It’s not just that my partner works the entire weekend. Rather, she vacates the house and sets up shop in a downtown hotel from Thursday to Sunday.
So, I have two weekends per year of (largely) pure free time.
We’re finally hitting the summer, and so it’s time to talk about summer reads!
I’ve given a few highlights from my own reads. How about yours?
A little over a month ago, I told readers about my foot injury. Taking a bad step on the stairs at home, I fractured the talus and navicular bones in my right foot.
As I get ready for my follow up appointment in about a week with the orthopedics folks, I wanted to send along a brief update. It’s mostly good news.
